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Toronto’s Linda Chamberlain a hero to the down-and-out

Toronto's Linda Chamberlain emerged from mental illness, addiction and homelessness to having a job, her own place, and giving back to others.

Toronto's Linda Chamberlain prepares for her clown school graduation performance. The mental health and housing advocate is still giving to others despite a cancer diagnosis last fall. (Keith Beaty / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

This makes perfect sense. Linda’s life has been a shopping cart loaded with jumbled hardship — poverty, schizophrenia, homelessness, addiction. Humour and courage have been her trusted hovercraft pilots, lifting her out of the muck time and time again. That and her cats, particularly Giorgio, who was her only true friend for many years. They lived together in a garbage bag under a hedge on Kingston Rd. for a decade.

So it also makes perfect sense that her clown persona is a cat. A pink homeless cat called Pinky.

I went to see her graduation show the other day. There were six acts, but most people had come just for Chamberlain. She appeared onstage in a pink-streaked wig, pink glasses, pink clown’s nose and pink bra over a white bodysuit.

“I want to make people laugh,” she said later. “Life is too short and people should have fun and be kind to each other and smile.”

I met Chamberlain 2½ years ago. She brought me to the schizophrenia floor of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health where, after years of being a patient, she was running a drumming circle. She loved her job but she had to quit because it was making her broke. Under the antediluvian welfare rules, the more money she made, the more the government took from her paycheque while raising her rent. Welfare policy expert John Stapleton dubbed this the “Linda Chamberlain rule” of welfare lunacy.

So many rules could be named after her. For instance, the Linda Chamberlain “it’s-never-too-late-to-learn-something” rule. Chamberlain’s mother yanked her out of Grade 2 because of her embarrassing facial tics, she says. Some 40 years later, she learned to read and write while living on the street.

Then there’s the Linda Chamberlain “don’t-write-people-off” rule. Who would have thought after bouncing from rooming house to street to hospital, she would be able to maintain an apartment? After moving into non-profit Mainstay Housing, she joined the agency’s board and then ran it.

But the rule she’d most like to be known for is the Linda Chamberlain “give-back-and-you’ll-be-happier” rule.

Chamberlain, 62, founded the Dream Team, a group of psychiatric patients who speak to social work and medical classes. She helped start a little soup kitchen in the basement of her apartment building. But the thing she’s most proud of is People and Pets — a little charity she started to foster the pets of people with mental illness when they’re in hospital.

One of her clients was in the audience that night. Her name is Mary, and her two cats, she told me, are “the centre of my life.” When she was hospitalized for depression a couple of months ago, Chamberlain came to her rescue.

“It was like an angel landed on my shoulder,” she said after the show.

Chamberlain was diagnosed with bone and liver cancer last fall. Since then, the weight has been falling off — 57 pounds and counting. Some mornings her legs hurt too much to stand. But, fuelled by laughter, she’s still charging ahead. Most days, she’s dropping off pet food at foster homes and picking up cats across town. This summer, she’s running a program at another downtown supportive housing complex, called Homes First.

She plans to perfect her clown act to perform on the cancer ward at Sick Kids hospital.

Meanwhile, her friends are planning ways to remember her: a plaque at CAMH, a feature documentary on her life, a book. They are collecting money for an annual prize called the Linda Chamberlain Pay It Forward award. Starting in September, it will go to a poor survivor of mental illness and/or addiction who has helped the world.

Chamberlain hopes it inspires people like her to believe they, too, are a “somebody.”

“People think we can’t do anything,” she said. “We can do it and make change and help other people and pay it forward.”

To contribute to the Linda Chamberlain Pay It Forward award, send money to the Bank of Montreal, account number: 2577-3979-573

Catherine Porter’s column usually appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. She can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca

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